Chella Contour and Highlight Pencils

The Ivory Lace Highlighting Pencil and Cinnamon Contouring Pencil by Chella are used together to re-shape your face using the contouring effect. Contouring tools can be expensive, but the Chella brand is quite affordable, at $15 per pencil. No other products are needed, though you may want to use a sponge or brush rather than fingers for blending.

Despite following the tutorial carefully, I found it difficult to use these pencils to create a lean and angular face. The cinnamon shade was particularly problematic; it is difficult to blend, but perfect blending is essential to avoid the dirty face look.

Using the lighter coloured pencil on its own to highlight strategic places, in a technique recently dubbed 'strobing', provided a much more satisfying result. The Ivory Lace pencil is quite versatile and can also be used on the inner corners of the eyes to create the illusion of larger eyes. The lighter coloured pencil also seems to be easier to blend, though this may depend on skin tone.

The pencils are available separately for $15 each, or together with a pouch for $30, online from Bellabox. Note that the pencils are not retractable and a sharpener is required once they have worn down.